The medal was instituted by the committee for the Afghan veterans' affairs under the council of the CIS countries' heads of government at a conference of CIS countries' Afghan veterans held in July 2003 in Yekaterinburg.
Under the Statute of the Medal, it will be presented not only to Afghan veterans, but also only to participants in other local wars and conflicts, state and public figures, and chiefs of executive bodies and veteran organizations in the Russian Federation and CIS countries who made a tangible contribution to the development of the veteran movement and took an active part in social and medical rehabilitation of the veterans of local wars and conflicts and members of their families.
A limited contingent of the Soviet troops was stationed in Afghanistan from the end of December 1979 to the middle of February 1989. According to the official Soviet propaganda, it fulfilled its "internationalist duty" there helping the Afghan people to establish new people's democratic power and fight against counter-revolutionaries (Mojaheddins). In real fact, this was a civil war in which the Soviet Union, for understandable political reasons, took the side of the pro-Soviet regime that had emerged in Afghanistan after the victory of the April revolution of 1978. According to the official data, the tragic cost of the Afghan venture for the USSR was over 15,000 Soviet soldiers killed and many thousands crippled.
